Synchrotrons

As the particles in a synchrotron are accelerated, the strength of the magnetic field is increased to keep the radius of the orbit approximately constant. This technique has the advantage that the magnet required for forming the particle orbits is much smaller than that needed in a cyclotron to produce the same particle energies. The acceleration is effected by radio-frequency voltages, while the synchronism is maintained by the principle of phase stability. The rate of increase of the energy of the particles is set by the rate of increase of the magnetic field strength. The peak accelerating voltage is ordinarily about twice as large as the average energy gain per turn would require, to provide the margin for phase stability. Particles can be stably accelerated with a range of energies and phases with respect to the accelerating voltage, and very intense beams can be produced.

The magnetic field must be shaped so as to focus the beam of particles. In early synchrotrons the field was caused to decrease slightly with increasing radius, as in a betatron. This arrangement resulted in a weak focusing effect that was adequate for machines in which the dimensions of the magnet gap could be appreciable in comparison with the radius of the orbit. The magnitude of the magnetic fields that may be used is limited by the saturation of the iron components that shape the field and provide a path for the magnetic flux. Therefore, if the energy of accelerators is to be increased, their radius must be increased correspondingly. For relativistic particles the radius is proportional to the kinetic energy. The magnet of a synchrotron with weak focusing, designed to have a reasonable intensity, would have a mass proportional to the cube of the radius. It is clear that increasing the energy beyond some point—in practice, about 10 GeV—would be very expensive.

The introduction of alternating-gradient focusing provided the solution to this problem and made possible the development of synchrotrons with much higher energies. The idea was promptly incorporated in the design of the 33-GeV proton synchrotron at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., and the 28-GeV machine at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), near Geneva.

The magnetic fields in an alternating-gradient synchrotron vary much more strongly with radius than those used for weak focusing. A magnet with pole-tips shaped as shown in cross section ab in the figure produces a magnetic field that sharply decreases with increasing radius. To the particle beam, this magnetic field acts like a lens with a very short focal length. In the vertical direction (the orbital plane is horizontal) it focuses the beam, but in the radial direction it is almost equally defocusing. A magnet with the pole-tip shapes shown in cross section cd in the figure produces a field that strongly increases with increasing radius. This field is defocusing in the vertical direction and focusing in the radial direction. Although pairing such magnetic fields results in partial cancellation, the overall effect is to provide focusing in both directions. The ring of magnetic field is created by a large number of magnets, with the two types of pole-tips alternating, as shown at the top of the figure. The beam, in effect, passes through a succession of lenses as the particles move around the ring, producing a large beam current in a vacuum chamber of small cross section.

Particles accelerated in a large synchrotron are commonly injected by a linear accelerator and are steered into the ring by a device called an inflector. They begin their acceleration in the ring when the magnetic field is small. As the field created by the ring magnets increases, the injection pulse is timed so that the field and the energy of the particles from the linear accelerator are properly matched. The radio-frequency accelerating devices, usually called cavities, operate on the same principle as a short section of a linear accelerator. The useful beam may be either the accelerated particles that have been extracted from the ring by special magnets or secondary particles ejected from a target that is introduced into the beam.

The invention of the synchrotron immediately solved the problem of the limit on the acceleration of electrons that had been imposed by the radiation of electrons moving in circular orbits. This radiation has been named synchrotron radiation because it was first observed during the operation of a 70-MeV electron synchrotron built at the General Electric Company Research and Development Center laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y. A betatron can accelerate electrons to 300 MeV only if the radiation is carefully compensated, but a synchrotron needs only a modest increase in the radio-frequency accelerating voltage. As the particles lose energy by radiation, their average phase with respect to the accelerating voltage simply shifts slightly so as to increase their average energy gain per revolution.

Electron synchrotrons with energies near 300 MeV have been constructed in several countries, the first being the one built in 1949 at Berkeley under Edwin McMillan’s direction. In these accelerators the electrons were injected by a pulsed electron gun, and the initial acceleration from 50–100 keV to 2–3 MeV was induced as in a betatron. The magnets were specifically designed to provide the accelerating flux in the initial part of the magnet cycle; during this time the speed of the electrons increased from about 50 percent of the speed of light to more than 95 percent. At this point, acceleration by the radio-frequency cavity supervened, and the small further change in speed was accommodated by a 5 percent change in the radius of the orbit.

Strong focusing was first applied to the electron synchrotron in the 1.2-GeV device built in 1954 at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. All large electron synchrotrons now are equipped with linear accelerators as injectors. The practical limit on the energy of an electron synchrotron is set by the cost of the radio-frequency system needed to restore the energy the electrons lose by radiation. To minimize this energy loss, the acceleration time is made as short as possible (a few milliseconds), and the magnetic fields are kept weak. The weak fields keep down the energy loss by guiding the electrons on gently curved paths. However, because synchrotron radiation losses increase as the fourth power of the energy, small increases in energy lead to large increases in radius.

Proton synchrotrons

The mode of operation of a proton synchrotron is very similar to that of an electron synchrotron, but there are two important differences. First, because the speed of a proton does not approach the speed of light until its energy is well above 1 GeV, the frequency of the accelerating voltage must be modulated to keep it proportional to the speed of the particle during the initial stage of the acceleration. Second, protons do not lose a significant amount of energy by radiation at energies attainable by present-day techniques. The limit on the energy of a proton synchrotron is therefore set by the cost of the magnet ring, which increases only as the first power of the energy or even more slowly. The highest-energy particle accelerators yet built are proton synchrotrons.

The first proton synchrotron to operate (1952) was the 3-GeV Cosmotron at Brookhaven. It, and other accelerators that soon followed, had weakly focusing magnets. The 28-GeV proton synchrotron at CERN and the 33-GeV machine at Brookhaven made use of the principle of alternating-gradient focusing, but not without complications. Such focusing is so strong that the time required for a particle to complete one orbit does not depend strongly on the energy of the particle. Therefore, for the energy range (which may extend to several GeV) within which acceleration appreciably affects the speed of the particle, phase stability operates as it does in a linear accelerator: the region of stable phase is on the rising side of the time curve of the accelerating voltage. At higher energies, however, the speed of the proton is substantially constant, and the region of stable phase is on the falling side of the voltage curve, as it is in a synchrocyclotron. At the point that divides these regions, called the transition energy, there is no phase stability. At Brookhaven a model electron accelerator was built to demonstrate that the beam could be accelerated through the transition energy in a stable manner.

In 1972 a large proton synchrotron went into operation at Fermilab. This machine had a magnet ring occupying a circular tunnel 6.3 km (3.9 miles) in circumference. At first it accelerated protons to 200 GeV, but by 1976 it had reached 500 GeV. In the same year, a similar accelerator, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), began operation at CERN. The SPS was fed protons by the 28-GeV proton synchrotron (PS) and accelerated them to 400 GeV, reaching 450 GeV at a later date.

To reach still higher energies, Fermilab built a second synchrotron in the 6.3-km tunnel. The Tevatron was designed to operate at nearly 1,000 GeV, or 1 TeV, the energy that gives the device its name. The intense magnetic fields needed to guide and focus such an energetic proton beam were provided by 1,000 magnets with windings made of a superconducting alloy, and the whole ring was kept at 4.5 kelvins by liquid helium. The original synchrotron at Fermilab, based on conventional magnets, served as injector for the Tevatron until 1997. In 1999 the Main Injector, a new synchrotron with a 3.3-km (2.1-mile) magnet ring, replaced the earlier machine to provide a more-intense beam for the Tevatron.

At Fermilab the proton beam, initially in the guise of negative hydrogen ions (each a single proton with two electrons), originated in a 750-kV Cockcroft-Walton generator and was accelerated to 400 MeV in a linear accelerator. A carbon foil then stripped the electrons from the ions, and the protons were injected into the Booster, a small synchrotron 150 metres (500 feet) in diameter, which accelerated the particles to 8 GeV. From the Booster the protons were transferred to the Main Injector, where they were further accelerated to 150 GeV before being fed to the final stage of acceleration in the Tevatron.

Until 2000, protons at 800 GeV were extracted from the Tevatron and directed onto targets to yield a variety of particle beams for different experiments. The Main Injector then became the principal machine for providing extracted beams, at the lower energy of 120 GeV but at much higher intensities than the Tevatron provided. In 1987 the Tevatron began to operate as a proton-antiproton collider, and this was its sole function from 2000 until it closed in 2011.

The SPS at CERN has also operated as proton-antiproton collider and has accelerated heavy ions (such as sulfur and lead ions), as well as electrons and positrons, for injection into the LEP collider. Together with the smaller PS, it continues to form part of CERN’s integrated complex of accelerators.

Colliding-beam storage rings

Although particles are sometimes accelerated in storage rings, the main purpose of these rings is to make possible energetic interactions between beams of particles moving in opposite directions. When a moving object strikes an identical object that is at rest, at most half of the kinetic energy of the moving object is available to produce heat or to deform the objects; the remainder is accounted for by the motions of the objects after the encounter. If, however, the two objects are in motion in opposite directions with equal speeds, then all the kinetic energy is available to produce heat or deformation at the instant of collision. If the objects stick together, the combination is at rest after the collision. For particles with speeds close to that of light, the effect is accentuated. If a 400-GeV proton strikes a proton at rest, only 27.4 GeV are available for the interaction; the remainder produces motion of the particles. On the other hand, if two 31.4-GeV protons collide, 62.3 GeV are available for the interaction (the collision is not quite “head-on”).

In a target of liquid or solid matter, the number of particles per unit volume accessible to an accelerated beam is large, but, when the target of one beam is another beam, the number of particles interacting is much smaller: the rate of interactions is proportional to the product of the currents in the two beams. Donald W. Kerst, builder of the first betatron, realized in 1956 that, though the beam current in a high-energy accelerator is small, the currents circulating in the magnet rings are effectively much larger because of the high orbital frequency of the particles. Thus, if the colliding beams are circulating in such rings, useful experiments on the interactions can be carried out. In a colliding-beam apparatus the two beams may be made up of identical particles (e.g., two beams of protons), in which case the installation consists of two separate rings of magnets. In one ring the magnetic fields guide the particles clockwise; in the other the fields are oriented in the opposite direction so as to guide the particles counterclockwise. The rings intersect at “interaction regions,” where the beams collide. In other cases the two beams are composed of particles of opposite charge (e.g., electrons and positrons, or protons and antiprotons). Such beams circulate in opposite directions in the same vacuum chamber, guided by the same magnets. The particles are bunched so that they collide only in the interaction regions.

The highest interaction energies at present are, and in the future will be, achieved in colliding-beam storage rings. This places the research with them at the very forefront of the quest for knowledge, even though many types of experiments cannot be conducted with storage rings. This is true partly because the number of interactions in a storage ring is a small fraction of that occurring in a stationary target and partly because storage beams do not produce intense beams of secondary particles.

Electron storage rings

Many storage rings have been constructed to study the interactions of electrons with positrons. The principal centres of this research are Cornell University; Stanford University; CERN; Tsukuba, Japan; Frascati, Italy; Beijing, China; and Novosibirsk, Russia.

Electrons are emitted from a heated filament and accelerated first in a linear accelerator and then in a synchrotron before being injected into a storage ring. To make positrons, a target such as a tungsten plate is inserted at a point along the linear accelerator. The energetic electrons radiate gamma rays in the heavy target, and these gamma rays can create electron-positron pairs. The positrons, which have positive charge, are selected by a suitable magnetic field and accelerated along the remainder of the linear accelerator. They are then fed into the synchrotron for further acceleration and finally injected into the storage ring. Since they have opposite electric charges, the electrons and positrons circulate in opposite directions through the magnets of a single storage ring.

Electron-positron storage rings are used principally for research into subatomic particles. If a single storage ring is used, the two beams will always have the same energy. Because of the pulsed operation of the acceleration system, the particles are stored in bunches, which can be made to collide at only a few places around the ring. Detectors surround one or more of the collision points to record the particles produced when an electron and a positron annihilate. Separate storage rings are sometimes used, in particular if the electrons and positrons are to have different energies. In the PEP-II storage rings at Stanford University and in the KEK-B facility at the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (KEK) in Tsukuba, electrons and positrons are stored at different energies so that they have different values of momentum. When they annihilate, the net momentum is not zero, as it is with particles of equal and opposite momentum, so new short-lived particles (specifically, B-mesons) are created in motion; this gives them an apparently longer lifetime in the laboratory owing to the effect of time dilation in the theory of special relativity.

The highest-energy electron-positron collider built so far was the LEP machine at CERN, which operated from 1989 to 2001. LEP reached a maximum of a little over 100 GeV per beam in a magnet ring that was 27 km (17 miles) in circumference and that occupied a 4-metre- (13-foot-) wide tunnel lying, on average, 100 metres (330 feet) underground. Other accelerators built earlier at CERN acted as injectors to LEP in a complex interlinked system. A purpose-built linear accelerator produced bunches of electrons and positrons at 600 MeV and fed them into the 28-GeV proton synchrotron, where they were accelerated to 3.5 GeV. They were then transferred to the SPS for acceleration to 20 GeV before injection into LEP. In the final stage LEP accelerated the counterrotating beams of electrons and positrons to a maximum energy of just over 100 GeV. The beams were then made to collide at four points around the ring where detectors were located.

The electrons and positrons in a storage ring emit synchrotron radiation at very great rates—more than a megawatt in some installations. From a high-energy storage ring, the wavelength of this radiation extends into the X-ray region. These storage rings now constitute the brightest sources of electromagnetic radiation available in the ultraviolet and X-ray regions. This radiation is proving to be increasingly useful for research in solid-state physics, biophysics, and chemical physics; a few electron storage rings of relatively low energy are equipped with magnetic structures specially designed to bend the beam to produce synchrotron radiation and are operated solely for this purpose.

Proton storage rings

In 1971 CERN pioneered the storage of protons with the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), in which two interlaced rings each stored protons at 31 GeV. The two beams collided at eight crossing points, giving a total collision energy of 62 GeV. This was equivalent to a stationary target being struck by a beam of 2 TeV.

A decade later CERN reached much higher energies with a radical new technique, colliding protons with antiprotons that were accelerated and stored together in the ring of the 450-GeV Super Proton Synchrotron. Protons and antiprotons, having opposite electric charge, circulate in opposite directions around the same synchrotron ring. The creation of an intense beam of antiprotons requires a technique known as “stochastic cooling,” developed by Simon Van der Meer at CERN. Antiprotons are produced when a high-energy proton beam strikes a metal target, but they emerge from the target with a range of energies and directions, so the resulting antiproton beam is broad and diffuse. Stochastic cooling provides a means of successively applying small correcting forces to the particles in the broad beam until they have been “cooled”—focused into a narrow beam of uniform energy. The technique is to store the particles in a large-aperture ring and use electronic devices to sense the average deviations from the desired orbit and apply an appropriate average correction at a later stage around the ring. The correction signals cross the ring directly on straight paths, so they arrive in time to influence the particles, which are traveling along a longer curved path.

The highest-energy proton-antiproton collider was the Tevatron at Fermilab. The antiprotons were produced by directing protons at 120 GeV from the Main Injector at Fermilab onto a nickel target. The antiprotons were separated from other particles produced in the collisions at the target and were focused by a lithium lens before being fed into a ring called the debuncher, where they underwent stochastic cooling. They were passed on first to an accumulator ring and then to the Recycler ring, where they were stored until there were a sufficient number for injection into the Main Injector. This provided acceleration to 150 GeV before transfer to the Tevatron. Protons and antiprotons were accelerated simultaneously in the Tevatron to about 1 TeV, in counterrotating beams. Having reached their maximum energy, the two beams were stored and then allowed to collide at points around the ring where detectors were situated to capture particles produced in the collisions.

During storage in the Tevatron, the beams gradually spread out so that collisions became less frequent. The beams were “dumped” in a graphite target at this stage, and fresh beams were made. This process wasted up to 80 percent of the antiprotons, which were difficult to make, so, when the Main Injector was built, a machine to retrieve and store the old antiprotons was also built. The Recycler, located in the same tunnel as the Main Injector, was a storage ring built from 344 permanent magnets. Because there was no need to vary the energy of the antiprotons at this stage, the magnetic field did not need to change. The use of permanent magnets saved energy costs. The Recycler “cooled” the old antiprotons from the Tevatron and also reintegrated with them a new antiproton beam from the accumulator. The more-intense antiproton beams produced by the Recycler doubled the number of collisions in the Tevatron.

The difficulty in making intense beams of antiprotons has led CERN to return to the concept of a proton-proton collider. CERN began building the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, in 2001, and test operations began in 2008. The LHC replaced LEP in its 27-km- (17-mile-) circumference tunnel in order to accelerate proton beams to 7 TeV. It uses a single ring of superconducting magnets of a special “2 in 1” design that bends protons in opposite directions in two separate beam pipes within the same structure. It is also designed to collide beams of heavy ions. In 2009 the LHC became the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator when it produced proton beams with energies of 1.18 TeV.

Electron-proton storage rings

The Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) at the DESY laboratory stores both electrons and protons. It is the only machine that operates in this way with particles of different masses. To do so requires two interlaced rings: one to accelerate and store the electrons, the other to accelerate and store the protons. The machine, which began operation in 1992, occupies a tunnel 6.3 km (4 miles) in circumference. With high fields generated by superconducting magnets, the proton ring can reach energies up to 820 GeV. The electron energy, however, is limited by synchrotron radiation losses but reaches a maximum 30 GeV with the aid of low-loss superconducting accelerating cavities.